Message text I tend to agree about the rake bonus. I've been on the giving end and receiving end of long-range rake shots, and I don't particularly think they are realistic. I suppose as long as both players are aware of the rule, it is fair, but getting a +5 bonus when shooting from a range of 10 seems absurd.
If you can manuever one of those large 20-gun ships close enough to rake someone at a range of 1 or 2 (or maybe even 3 or 4), I can see awarding the high rake bonus. A twenty-gun broadside raking your ship from a hex away should be a very painful hit. The idea of a rake is that you are able to shoot the length of the enemy's ship, doing a great amount of damage to the crew and rigging (and sometimes to a thinner hull on the bow or stern).
At the higher ranges, however, I think that the rake bonus should progressively shrink down to +1 or even 0. This change would only take a small modification to the combat chart.
At a range of 10 (which would probably be, what, about 1000 meters in the real world?), you're lucky even to hit the ship, and a "rake" would have minimal impact at best on the effectiveness and aim of the shot. The cannonballs would be lobbed in from such a high trajectory that they couldn't conceivably do the same kind of damage as shots fired level along the length of the ship. In fact, in some historical battles, cannonballs fired at long range at a ship with a thick hull and deck often did nothing more than bounce off without doing any damage. The range modifier is meant to simulate this, but the high rake bonus undercuts that and makes for some extremely unrealistic shots. |
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